11 May Barwell supports borough’s bounce back from COVID-19

The borough’s Economic Recovery Task Force – which includes Barwell Business Park – was spotlighted at Kingston Expo for its role in supporting businesses to move forward from the pandemic.

Barwell Business Park sponsored the online Expo held on 28 April, and also had a virtual stand. The event included a ‘Local Vision – Roundtable’ session discussing how the borough could unlock its business potential following COVID-19, and mentioning partnership as a key theme.

Jennifer Edwards, Director of Public Affairs and Insight, Kingston University, said: “We’ve done a lot of work with the council’s Economic Recovery Task Force, and for the Kingston Strategic Partnership, and these things have been meeting throughout the pandemic, to really bring together all our key partners and see how we can support in terms of impact in the borough.”

The university and Barwell Business Park are both members of the Kingston Council-led Task Force which focuses on COVID-19 business recovery and support measures, skills and employment support initiatives as well as targeted mitigation/investment for recovery.

Key to its operations are strong partnership, intelligence and knowledge, data collection/analyst sharing insights, and innovation, ownership of delivery and crucially resources.

Councillor John Sweeney, Kingston Council’s Portfolio Holder for Business and Leisure, previously spoke to Barwell Today – the park’s newspaper – about the Task Force.

He said: “The different partners across the borough are already working closely and meeting regularly. An Economic Task Force set up by the council works with Kingston First, Barwell and the university on a number of initiatives. For example, a lot of work has been done across the borough to establish and launch Kickstart so local businesses can hire a young person using generous government funding.

“Together the university and council have launched the Kingston Innovation Network. Webinars have introduced local businesses to Innovate UK and other sources of funding support. For example, Kingston is one of six universities involved in a pioneering programme which encourages collaboration between universities and businesses to promote economic growth, innovation and recovery in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

At the Round Table session, Jennifer Edwards also told attendees about the university’s award-winning Town House building at the Penrhyn Road campus (pictured).

She said: “We have our new building which unfortunately opened just when the pandemic hit so I’m conscious that many of you won’t have been in there yet but the idea is this building will provide community space performance space. It houses our central library, which is open to the community, and it’s really designed to bring everyone into the university and really break down any barriers that exist.

“We’re also working on our estate vision, which we’re launching towards the end of this year and that’s really cementing the vision for the university and how we see our estate working for the next 10 to 20 years. We’ll be looking at what the pandemic taught us about how we use buildings, how we use space, and also how we live to shared working solutions within the town centre. The discussions going on at the moment are really quite interesting.”